Livelihood Generation Through Participation in Joint Forest Management Programme

The study was conducted in “East Forest Circle” of Jammu division. Multistage sampling plan was followed for the selection of respondents. Six forest ranges from East circle having maximum number of JFMCs were selected purposively. Twenty four committees, four from each selected ranges of East circle were selected through random sampling technique. Eight members from each selected JFMC were selected randomly as treatment group for the study making the sample size to 192 respondents. Two villages from each range (12 villages in total) were also selected through simple random sampling technique. From each selected village nine non-JFMC members were randomly selected. Thus, a total sample of 108 non-JFMC members was selected as control group from these villages. Thereby making a grand sample of 300 respondent including both JFM and Non-JFM respondents were interviewed for assessing the Livelihood generation through participation in Joint Forest Management Programme. Results of the study showed that education standard was found to be very less in study area. Significant improvement has been observed after the successive execution of JFM programme with respect to total number of trees planted and increase in forest cover. Results further showed that there was statistically significant difference between JFM and Non-JFM members in number of man days/year and averages wages/year. JFM had significant impact on the overall income of the households falling in its area of operation.